


Redress of Grievances

by Corinna



Category: Glee
Genre: AU, Alternate Universe - Crack, Bureaucracy, Fluff, M/M, Washington D.C., first amendment rights, mortgages
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-11
Updated: 2013-03-11
Packaged: 2017-12-05 00:31:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/716810
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Corinna/pseuds/Corinna
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>AU - Kurt is a government bureaucrat. And there's a handsome new protester outside his office.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Redress of Grievances

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by the the Sigma Lambda Klaine hiatus State of the Union drabble challenge for "Economy," and by having way too much business travel to downtown DC this year. My apologies to all the people working at the various agencies mentioned, who I am sure are all far less silly than this fic.
> 
> Title from [the First Amendment](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Amendment_to_the_United_States_Constitution#Text) to the US Constitution.

Kurt had been away at a conference in entirely unglamorous St. Louis for a week, and it was almost a relief to walk up to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau building and see that nothing had changed. Same construction blocking 17th Street, same ugly-as-sin building, same protester out front — _wait_. That was new.

Kurt gave the protester the side-eye as he walked into the lobby. He didn’t look like the sort of protester they occasionally attracted: lobbying groups, angry homeowners, Occupy conspiracy-theorists. He was young, good-looking, and well-groomed, with a clean-shaven face and slicked-back dark hair, and his outfit was straight out of Brooks Brothers. He wasn’t shouting or handing out pamphlets or anything: he was just standing there, smiling and nodding politely to people as they went by, wearing a sandwich board that said “Fix the Economy.”

“We have a protester?” he asked the security guard as he badged himself in.

She rolled her eyes. “Since last week. He’s cute, but he’s dumb as a stick.”

\- - - - -

The protester was still there when Kurt went out to get lunch, only now he was leaning against the side of the building and reading a paperback copy of _Patti Lupone: A Memoir_. Coming back with his sandwich, he said to the guy, “You know, if you’re protesting it, you probably shouldn’t lean on it.”

“I’ve got no quarrels with the building,” the guy said, but he stood up straight anyhow.

“If you don’t dislike this building, then you don’t have eyes,” Kurt replied. “It’s my second-least-favorite in DC.”

“What’s the first?” 

Kurt shuddered a little. “Have you seen HUD?” The Housing and Urban Development building looked like the world of the Jetsons as rendered by a depressed person with an unlimited concrete budget. It depressed him every time he had to go there for a meeting.

“Not that I can recall. Though I have to admit it sounds memorable,” the protester said, and he smiled, really smiled. His eyes got bright and crinkled at the sides and oh, Kurt really had to go back to his office now.

\- - - - - 

The next morning, the protester was back, still looking preppy, still wearing the sandwich board. _Fix the Economy._

“Can’t you be more specific?” Kurt asked as he walked by.

“I thought that was your job,” said the protester.

\- - - - - 

“We have a protester,” he told Santana Lopez. She was a junior Central America analyst at State; they’d met at a gay karaoke night in Dupont Circle. They’d developed a complicated hate-love friendship over the past year, but it was one Kurt held onto because it was good to have someone to talk to about the frustrations of government work who didn’t work directly with him. Besides, he figured she would either start a major regional war or become an Undersecretary one day, and either way she was worth knowing. So their Whisky Wednesdays at the Round Robin had become a standing bitch-session date.

“ _A_ protester? Like, just one?”

Kurt nodded. “Normally, we don’t get very many. The White House is right around the corner, and it’s a much better target.”

“Christ, Hummel, way to work for a bunch of squeaky-clean government do-gooders. A day that I don’t get yelled at about black helicopters by at least five unshaven kooks is either a snow day or the Apocalypse.”

“It’s just no one’s heard of us yet,” he shot back. “This guy’s ahead of the curve.”

“Do you actually want to be protested?”

Kurt shrugged. “I guess. It means someone’s paying attention?”

Santana looked at him closely over her glass. “Just how cute is this guy?”

 _The cutest_ , Kurt didn’t say. “I really hadn’t noticed.”

Santana snorted and took a long swig of her whisky. “You need to get laid so bad, _my_ balls hurt.”

\- - - - - 

“What are you trying to get out of this?” Kurt demanded the next morning. The protester was back, still with the same maddening sign. Today he was wearing a bowtie over a polo shirt, which shouldn’t have worked, but it really did. 

The protester shrugged. “Trying to remind the people in this agency of why they’re here, for one.”

“You think we don’t know?”

“Maybe you need to be reminded why it matters. What do you do?”

“I work in mortgage regulation.”

The protester smiled. “Mortgage regulation. Because no one’s messed that up recently, right?” It could have sounded mean, but somehow it didn’t: he made it sound like he and Kurt were on the same side of some joke. 

“I’m new here,” was all Kurt could think to reply.

“Well, that’s good. I bet they need smart, passionate guys like you.” 

Kurt could feel himself blushing, knew the protester could see it too. Stupid Celtic gene pool. 

“Look, if it helps, you don’t have to think of it as a protest. Maybe I’m here to encourage you.”

“What?”

“You’ve got a really big job to do. It’s easy to get disheartened. So, just remember in your big office in that fancy Federal building that people are counting on you.”

Kurt was going to shoot back something about anonymous shared cubicles and cantankerous elevators, but the protester put his hand on Kurt’s arm, warm and solid, and he’d squeezed just a little, enough for Kurt to feel it through the layers of his suit jacket and shirt, and his arms were strong and toned and just really, really nice. 

“Thanks,” Kurt breathed. “I — I should go.”

“Sure,” said the protester. He looked a little dazed too. Kurt let himself smile before he pulled away.

“Thanks again,” he said.

“Courage,” said the protester.

\- - - - - 

The next morning, the protester was gone, and there was another guy, taller and blond, wearing the sandwich board sign in his place. Kurt walked right past him in the morning, and at lunch, but when he went out in the middle of the afternoon for a cup of coffee, he finally asked. “What happened to the other guy?”

“Who?”

Kurt waved his arm, gesturing at the sign. “The other guy who’s been here all week. What happened to him?”

The new protester brightened. He had a giant smile. “Oh! He was covering for me.”

“Covering…?”

“Yeah, I started this protest last week, but then I had to go back to Ohio. Lord Tubbington was appearing in housing court, and I’m his paralegal.”

The only part of that sentence that made any sense to Kurt was ‘housing court.’ “So you had someone covering your protest for you?”

“That’s what bros do, dude. Blaine’s been my boy since high school; of course he stepped up in my hour of need.”

“And now he’s gone,” Kurt said slowly. Of course, he thought: he finally meets a nice cute guy in DC, officially the gayest city in America, and it turns out the guy lives in Ohio, the place Kurt fought to escape. Great.

“I’ll tell him you were asking after him, though!” the new guy exclaimed. “He’ll dig that he had a fan.”

“Please don’t,” Kurt said heavily, and went inside.

\- - - - -

“We have a _different_ protester now,” Kurt said.

Even over the phone, he can hear Santana’s eyes roll. “This is the stupidest story you’ve ever told me, Kurt, and I’m including the entirely too-long tale of the misplaced hors d’oeuvres at your dad’s wedding.”

“I spent a lot of money on those crab puffs.”

“Whatever. So is this one cute too?”

“No. I mean, yes, I guess? He’s got very gay hair.”

“But you don’t like him.”

“I didn’t say I liked the first one.” 

“You didn’t need to, ladycakes. You’ve got no poker face.”

Kurt sighed, and twirled the cord of his desk phone around his fingers. “Santana. He went back to _Ohio_.”

There was a long pause on the other end of the line: even Santana understood how badly the situation sucked. “Drunken karaoke Friday?” she said finally.

“You’re on,” he said, and hung up.

\- - - - -

There was a bar near Santana’s house in the Virginia suburbs that did that did a campy karaoke night on Fridays, and it was where they’d ended up becoming semi-regulars. Kurt usually took the Metro out instead of driving — he’d crash on Santana’s couch, or get a car service home. Tonight especially, he needed a drink. Maybe even two.

There’d been some sort of emergency at work — “you know I can’t talk about it, so don’t ask” — and Santana wasn’t done until after 9. So they hadn’t gotten to the bar until the evening was well underway and there was already a wait-list to sing. Kurt got himself an Old Fashioned and settled down to watch. Some of the people were actually good, and the ones who weren’t, well, at least they were sincere. 

They got in a song each by eleven, but it was close to midnight before they got up to do their well-practiced duet on “Total Eclipse of the Heart.” Maybe it was the extra drinks, maybe it was the frustration of the week getting vented, but Kurt thought it was one of their better efforts. They even got a round of applause when they were done. Flush with success and alcohol, Kurt gave Santana a long hug and went to the bar for another round.

“Hey,” said a familiar voice behind him in the crowd.

Kurt turned around to see the protester, _his_ protester, standing there, looking happy and relaxed and very much not protesting anything. 

“Hey,” Kurt managed.

“You were great up there.”

Kurt shook his head. “It’s all Santana; she could have been a singer if she didn't want to rule the world.”

The protester laughed. “Trust me, you’re easily her equal. And I’m a professional.”

“A professional protester?” 

“A totally amateur protester,” he said, his eyes warm. “A professional performer. My name’s Blaine, by the way.”

“Kurt,” he said. They were silent for a moment, looking at each other in this new environment. Finally, Kurt said, “I thought you went back to Ohio.”

Blaine frowned. “I don’t live in Ohio.”

Kurt had never been so happy to hear those words. “But your friend, the one with the, uh, mouth —”

“Sam?”

“OK, Sam. He said you were his friend who’d stepped up when he had to go back to Ohio.”

“He went back to Ohio. I haven’t been back since high school.” 

Kurt had to smile at that. “Me either.”

“Really?” Blaine’s eyebrows went up, and how were they so cute when they were that bushy? “Seems like we have more in common than concern for the state of the economy.”

“Where do you live now?”

“New York. But I’m here doing _Romeo and Juliet._ ”

“At the Folger?” Kurt’s eyes went wide.

“Don’t be too impressed; I’m just Benvolio.”

“I’m still impressed,” Kurt said, and now it was Blaine’s turn to look bashful. “That’s amazing. But… how did you have time to protest at my office?”

“We perform evenings. And an understudy covered for me on the Wednesday matinee.” Blaine took a drink from his beer; Kurt tried not to watch too intensely. “Sam was my best friend in high school; he’s got his own ideas about how the world should work, but all he ever wants to do is help people, you know? So when he needed a stand-in, it wasn’t like I could say no. Besides, it was fun.”

“What was that housing court thing, by the way?”

“Don’t ask,” Blaine said.

“OK. So you performed tonight and then came out to do karaoke?”

“I like being on stage,” Blaine shrugged. “A bunch of us came. It’s a good way to blow off steam.” He gestured towards a group of good-looking guys behind him, all talking among themselves. “Friar Laurence, Mercutio, Tybalt.” 

“And me without my balcony,” Kurt said.

Blaine’s smile was like a sunrise. “That could be arranged.”

“Oh, really?” Kurt reached over and gently put his hand on Blaine’s forearm. Blaine reached up and captured the hand with his own, twining their fingers together.

“Play your cards right,” he said. “I could be encouraged.”

 


End file.
